


Flights of Fancy

by Karasuno Volleygays (ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor)



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Ryoma has a soft creamy center if you look hard enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 07:47:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18406259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor/pseuds/Karasuno%20Volleygays
Summary: Her hair was still too long, and he was pretty sure he liked it that way.





	Flights of Fancy

**Author's Note:**

> This was my piece for the Tenipuri Valentine Zine ([completely free for download here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/16xK2RQDBmP8BqBK6h9QdRGOZRFXHXfqw/view)). I luff these nerds so muuuuch.

The room was full and noisy and _boring._

Ryoma wished he had a hat to tug over his eyes so he could shut out at least some of the din of the party. Dozens of people he didn’t know were walking around discussing him and his tennis and his life in general like they knew him intimately.

However, there was no escape for him at the moment. He was under threat of being dropkicked into the Pacific by his manager if he ducked out of a party being thrown in his name — and for charity, no less. Ryoma had absolutely nothing against inner city children getting funding for sports programs; he just hated events like this with a fiery passion.

A few familiar faces gave him the will to press on, though, and when one in particular came into his field of vision, he smiled to himself.

Her hair was still too long, and he was pretty sure he liked it that way.

Sakuno found him right away, and she gave him a shy little wave. “There you are, Ryoma-kun.”

The sorely missed lilt of Japanese was a comfort to Ryoma’s ears. He could read, write, and speak English just fine, but there was something about speaking Japanese that made him feel more at home. “Ryuuzaki,” he grunted, not communicating how glad he was to see her as much as he probably should have.

“Grandma really wanted to come,” she said with a sad smile. “Her doctor told her no flying halfway around the world.”

She sat next to him and examined his three empty plates, the remains of his monstrous dinner stuck to the surface — roast beef, grilled salmon, and roast beef again. That coaxed a giggle from her as she fished through her purse. Ryoma almost groaned out loud when she slipped a mostly-cold can of grape Ponta into his hand. His long lost favorite beverage had been banned by his personal trainer, a cantankerous middle-aged Spanish guy named Mario. “I know you hate champagne,” she whispered.

“Thanks.” Ryoma watched the dancing couples twirling around, waiting for a large old man to step on his age-inappropriate date’s toe. Her squawk of pain was just loud enough to drown out the sound of the can opening. He raised the can to Sakuno in salute and drank half of it in one long drag.

Once he polished it off, Sakuno stowed the can back in her bag and smiled broadly at him. “I wonder if Mario-san will ever find out.”

“Probably.” Ryoma shrugged. “What’s he gonna do, fire me?”

“He might.”

Sakuno complemented his slouch with good posture and a straight back while they quietly stared out at the swarms of revelers. He wasn’t usually one to people watch, but there was little else to do but eat, get drunk, or dance. He had his fill of the first and didn’t care for the last two.

His attention drifted over to Sakuno, whose foot was clicking on the floor in time with the beat, and her eyes followed the dancers around the room. He may not have wanted to dance, but he couldn’t miss the fact that she did.

 _I’m getting soft in my old age_ , Ryoma thought as he stood. Holding out a hand to Sakuno, he said, “C’mon, Ryuuzaki. Let’s go.”

Her eyes lit up when she realized what he was offering, but the excitement was quickly shrouded by confusion when Ryoma led her through the kitchen and out into the alley behind the reception hall. “Ryoma-kun, where are we going?”

Ryoma didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled her behind him until they were on the west side of the building, near a half-open window next to the string quartet hired for the evening’s entertainment. The music wafted out into the cool night air, bereft of nearly all the obnoxious chatter beyond it.

He shifted his hand in hers and slid an arm around her waist. “Dance with me, Ryuuzaki.”

Sakuno gawked at him. “Then why are we outside? Everyone else is dancing inside.”

Tugging her close to his chest, Ryoma murmured in her ear, “Because I’m not dancing with them.”

Her face burned red, and Ryoma didn’t bother masking his smirk. It was always easy to coax a reaction out of her. He enjoyed it when she looked at him like he was outrageous, but he loved it when her eyes were wide and her cheeks pink and her breath hitched.

And here and there, she would look at him like she loved him, and that was his favorite of all. It might have even beat out the food as his favorite part of going back to Japan between seasons.

Ryoma tugged them into motion, a simple circle pattern his mother had compelled him to learn over a decade ago. Sakuno’s movements were in concert with his, and Ryoma wasn’t surprised she knew how to dance. It suited her, especially with her hair down and loose around her shoulders.

The patterns of beads sewn into her purple dress glinted in the light of the streetlamps, and Ryoma had to stare at her forehead to keep from letting his gaze drift down to that glittering neckline and the swath of creamy skin exposed above it.

“Ryoma-kun, you’re being really quiet tonight.” Sakuno bit her lip and gazed up at him with concern in her eyes. “I know you don’t want to be here, but it’s almost over.”

He nearly faltered. “Do I want to be at this party? Not really. I could go to bed early instead of watching other people dance badly.” Giving her hand a squeeze, he amended. “But right here, right now? It’s fine if it’s you.”

Sakuno froze in place, her jaw hanging open at his words.”Ryoma . . .”

The lack of her usual honorific gave him pause. He was used to people calling him only by his given name due to how much time he spent in Europe and the US, but in Japan, and with Sakuno in particular, it was never just ‘Ryoma’. Yet there in the soft halo of evening, wrapped in a blanket of cool air, the sound of it warmed something in his belly.

Their dance continued until the song ended, and the two of them stood in the middle of the alley, unmoving until long after the next piece started.

She was waiting on him to make the next move, but Ryoma had no idea what that was supposed to be. Since he was old enough to shave, women had pursued him. He never had any interest in them — not when their hair was never long enough or their hips wobbly enough or cheeks pink enough or voice quiet enough.

And absolutely none of them would smuggle soda into a fancy banquet just because he liked it.

The hand on Sakuno’s waist fell away, but the other remained firmly laced with hers. “Let’s ditch the party.”

Sakuno shook her head. “Won’t you get in trouble with your manager? I’m sure he told you not to run off.”

Ryoma craned his neck to look up at the edge of the roof overhead. After spending a better part of his life in hotels all around the world, he knew that any one of them worth its salt had some sort of rooftop access that wasn’t for guests but the rule was never enforced.

“He said not to leave the building.” He pointed up. “We’re not leaving the building if we’re up there.”

She stifled a giggle. “I suppose we’re not.” This time, Sakuno led the way.

He had no idea why she knew how to get to the roof, but several flights of stairs later, a cold blast of autumn wind unimpeded by the surrounding shops skated across every bit of his exposed skin.

Sakuno drifted over to the fencing surrounding the borders of the roof and gazed out across the shining lights of —

“What city are we in again?” Ryoma asked.

“Chicago.” When he joined her at the rail, she leaned into his side. She pointed out a tall building jutting up from the horizon. “That’s Willis Tower.” And then another. “Trump International.”

Ryoma frowned. “The loud orange guy with the bad wig?”

She nodded. “Yes, that one.” Gesturing back toward the far reaches of the city, she added, “And the Aon Center.”

“You read the tourist books in the hotel rooms, don’t you?” Ryoma clucked his tongue. “Rookie.”

With a light elbow to his arm, Sakuno chided, “Not all of us have traveled the world a dozen times over before thirty.”

“Hotels, airports, and tennis courts look pretty much the same everywhere. I don’t care which is which.” Ryoma glanced over at her, a cloak of light illuminating her profile, making her skin glow.

He swallowed hard. He had almost forgotten what it was like to see her every day. It was certainly something his younger self had taken for granted. Ryuuzaki Sakuno would always be there. But he started traveling for tennis and then she wasn’t.

It would be expensive and really make his manager annoyed with him, but Ryoma knew what he wanted and didn’t hesitate to reach for it. “Then do it now.”

“Do what?”

Ryoma gestured at the panorama of — she said Chicago, right? “Travel. See things. Travel the world a dozen times. Forget what city you’re in.”

Sakuno sighed. “That sounds nice, Ryoma-kun, but that kind of life isn’t available to me. Not everyone can play games to pay the bills.”

“It’s available to _me_ ,” Ryoma stated. “If they’re going to pay me stupid amounts of money to do what I would’ve done anyway, I might as well spend it on something worthwhile.”

She reeled away from the rail and gasped. “Ryoma, you can’t just take me with you everywhere.”

“Why?”

Her hands covered her mouth and she closed her eyes with a sigh. “You know what that will look like.”

“So?” Drifting over to stand in front of her, looming over her in height like he had since the middle of high school, Ryoma clasped his larger hand around both her wrists and pried them away from her face. “People always talk. You don’t actually have to listen to them.”

Sakuno lowered her head. “It’s not something I can have.”

“Are you really that worried about what people will think?” Ryoma’s brow scrunched in thought. This wasn’t going like he had pictured at all. Maybe her attitude toward him really had changed over the years, and he was too late to finally do something about it.

She gave him a watery smile and reached up to stroke his cheek. “I’m not worried about what people would think it is. I do care about what _you_ think it would be.”

 _What_ you _think it would be._ Her words rattled around in Ryoma’s brain. Did he want Sakuno to follow him around from place to place? Yes, he did. Was it because she would be a slice of home amidst foreign faces? That was certainly a part of it.

“No,” he mumbled. That wasn’t it.

Sakuno tilted her head to the side. “No?”

Almost comically bereft of a witty retort for the first time in his life, Ryoma chuckled and shook his head. “Don’t know.” He wrapped a lock of soft brown hair around his finger and gave it a soft pull. “Hair’s still too long.”

Groaning, she said, “Ryoma, you’re not making any sense.”

“To hell with it.” Ryoma tilted her chin up and brushed his lips against hers. “I like you. You like me. That’s what I want it to be.”

She glared at him — not the reaction he had been expecting. “Don’t you dare say that and not mean it, Ryoma. Don’t you dare.”

“What, and risk the old hag nailing my nuts to her office door?” Ryoma shivered at the mental image of Ryuuzaki Sumire unmanning him with a wicked smile on her face. “That would be a special kind of stupid.”

Sakuno laughed out loud, a clear and merry sound, until tears slipped down her cheeks. “You’re still afraid of Grandma? Ryoma, it’s been fifteen years since she’s even been your coach. If she was going to kill you, she would’ve done it a long time ago and you would’ve deserved it.”

Sobering, she brushed her thumb over the crow’s feet that had begun to gather around his eyes from a mix of excess sunshine and simply being in his thirties. “Are you sure? I don’t want anything you aren’t sure you’re ready to give.”

Before she could waste her breath half-heartedly trying to talk him out of it, Ryoma kissed her until she had no breath left. “You’re talking too much, Ryuuzaki. Since when have I done anything I didn’t want to do?”

“Yes.”

Ryoma blinked at her simple answer. Yes, she would travel with him? Yes, she wanted to kiss him too? Yes, she talked too much? He knew he was missing a link somewhere when Sakuno rolled her eyes and murmured, “Oh, come here.”

She grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket and pulled him down to her height to kiss him. Ryoma wasn’t surprised in the slightest by the strength of her grip, despite him having twenty centimeters and probably twenty five kilos to his advantage.

Sakuno’s face was beet red when she loosened her grip on him, and a lopsided smile teased its way across his lips. “The spring tour starts in April.”

“I’ll be there.”

After a small gust of wind, Ryoma noticed goosebumps sprouting along her arms. She yelped when he slid off his suit jacket and dropped it onto her mostly-bare shoulders. He wrapped his arms around her waist and settled his chin on her shoulder. Together they looked out over the Chicago skyline.

“Tell me more about these buildings or whatever.”

And she did. Ryoma didn’t remember a damn bit of it, but the sound of her voice filling a long-quiet space in him he didn’t know was empty until she filled it again.

He had definitely missed this, missed her.

The banquet had long wound down before the cold chased them both back inside. As Ryoma expected, Michel, his harried-looking manager, honed in on him as soon as he slipped back into the hotel’s ballroom.

“Echizen, where the hell have you been?” Michel snapped, a mixture of booze and annoyance making his accent stand out more than usual.

Ryoma shrugged, but he yelped when Sakuno kicked his shin with the pointed toe of her shoe. “This was your idea. Be honest.”

Shooting her a glare, Ryoma grumbled, “I was still here. Just not _here_.”

Michel ranted under his breath in rapid French, and what he could catch of it made Ryoma snort. “I heard that.”

“Good. You’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days.” He wrinkled his nose at Ryoma before turning his attention to Sakuno. “Are you with him? If you are, turn back now. He will drive you up the wall and down the other side.”

Sakuno giggled and waved off Michel’s warning. “Oh, I know,” she said in better English than Ryoma could remember her being capable of. She hugged his bicep and sighed. “If he didn’t drive me a little crazy, he wouldn’t be Ryoma. Sometimes, you just have to let it happen.”

Michel cackled. “Not if I can help it.”

“Leaving now for real, Michel,” Ryoma said, steering Sakuno toward the exit, cocking a short wave over his shoulder.

They were almost outside when Sakuno stopped short. “You didn’t say it.”

“What?”

She looked at him like he had an extra head. “You know. The thing you always say when you won and you know it.”

Finally, a long abandoned practice pushed its way back into his memory, and Ryoma pulled out his phone. He sent a simple text to Michel, which he was fairly certain he would get an earful for but he didn’t care.

 _Mada mada dane_.

Sakuno watched him as her taxi pulled away from the curb to take her back to her own hotel, and Ryoma stared after it long past when she was gone. He had a feeling his world was about to get a whole lot smaller, and he had to admit that he missed the feeling.

 


End file.
